And she died and I lived and a hole opened up, dark and bottomless, and I fell down and kept falling for centuries.

I don't know for sure that the words I write were the words that were actually spoken.

They probably weren't. But this is how I remember these things, and all we can ever be is faithful to our memories of reality, rather than the reality itself, which is something closely related but never precisely the same thing.

It was like being stuck in the same song, with a chorus you had once liked but now made you want to rip your ears off.

The longer you live, the more you realise that nothing is fixed. Everyone will become a refugee if they live long enough. Everyone would realise their nationality means little in the long run. Everyone would see their worldviews challenged and disproved. Everyone would realise that the thing that defines a human being is being a human .

‘History isn't something you need to bring to life. History already is alive. We are history. History isn't politicians or kings and queens. History is everyone. It is everything.’

'Well, I love music. I love playing music. But I'd find it a hard thing to teach. I've always found it hard to talk about music.’

The past is trying to burst through.

No.

It is already through. The past is always here.

You realised that we weren't special. We weren't superheroes. We were just old. And that, in cases such as Hendrich, it didn't really matter how many years or decades or centuries had passed, because you were always living within the parameters of your personality. No expanse of time or place could change that. You could never escape yourself.

‘The past is never gone. It just hides.’